An investigation of increases in metamemory confidence across multiple study trials

Abstract

We employed a list-learning methodology to investigate whether discrepancies between mean judgements of learning (JOLs) and recall in a multiple study–recall context reflects a metacognitive failure in applying the knowledge that repeated study benefits recall. In Experiment 1 one group of participants was explicitly informed that repetition enhances recall, whereas a second group was told that repetition was not beneficial for future recall. Although JOLs in the former condition were significantly higher, this difference was evident even in the first study phase, prior to any repetition taking place. In Experiment 2 we investigated whether the modest increases in JOLs that are typically observed over multiple study trials reflects instead an attribution of enhanced fluency, rather than metacognitive understanding per se.